On 29th April at 12:00 CET / 11:00 BST, our Virtual Programmatic Day (VPD) 2026 returns, bringing together industry leaders to explore the forces shaping the next chapter of programmatic advertising.
The event will take place in a hybrid format, offering attendees the flexibility to join online or attend in person in London. The full programme will be live-streamed directly from Google’s London office, creating a dynamic setting where in-person energy meets a fully connected virtual audience.
For those joining on-site, it’s a unique opportunity to engage face-to-face with industry peers, speakers, and partners. Virtual attendees can tune in to the same high-quality discussions from anywhere.
In just under two hours, the agenda cuts straight to the issues that matter most right now, offering practical insight, honest discussion, and perspectives from across the ecosystem.
So, what will you take away from this year’s programme?
CTV continues to attract investment, but behind the growth, real challenges are emerging.
At VPD, the conversation will move beyond hype to focus on what’s really happening in the CTV ecosystem:
If you’re investing in (or planning to invest in) CTV, this is a chance to understand how to navigate the complexity and unlock its full potential.
Everyone is talking about growth, but what’s genuinely powering it?
This year’s agenda brings together experts to unpack the real drivers behind programmatic’s next phase, including:
More importantly, the discussion will go beyond trends, focusing on how these changes translate into actionable strategies for buyers, sellers, and tech providers.
For publishers, monetisation is becoming more complex and more critical.
As demand evolves, so do the expectations around how inventory is packaged, priced, and traded. At Virtual Programmatic Day, the conversation will explore:
Whether you’re on the sell-side or buy-side, understanding these shifts is key to staying competitive.
Alongside the panel discussions, the agenda includes a case study spotlight, offering a closer look at how companies are putting these strategies into practice.This is where the conversation moves from industry-level trends to real execution, giving you tangible examples you can apply to your own approach.
This year’s programme brings together senior voices from across the ecosystem. First confirmed speakers include:
Paul Gubbins, CTV Lead, Exchange Platforms, EMEA, Google
Nikunj Sureka, Senior Director, Product, Verve
Lisa Kalyuzhny, VP of Sales, EMEA, Nexxen
Mara Negri, SVP Global Media Agencies, MFE Advertising
Broadcast live from Google’s London office, these speakers will share perspectives from across platforms, media owners, and technology, ensuring a well-rounded and practical discussion.
Whether you choose to attend in person in London or join virtually, Virtual Programmatic Day 2026 offers a focused, high-impact way to stay on top of the changes shaping programmatic right now.
👉 Register to join us in-person here (for IAB Europe Members)
👉 Secure your spot to join us virtually here
IAB Europe Launches RFP for the development of new compliance workflow capabilities within the IAB Europe Vendor and CMP Management Portal.
IAB Europe is pleased to invite qualified technology providers to respond to a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the development of new compliance workflow capabilities within the IAB Europe Vendor and CMP Management Portal, supporting the Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF).
As part of the ongoing expansion of the TCF compliance programmes, IAB Europe is seeking to enhance its existing registration and administration platform with additional tools to support compliance tracking, audit management, and operational enforcement workflows.
The initial scope of this project includes:
The portal is a modern React / .NET application, hosted on AWS in the EU, and the new functionality will be developed in alignment with existing UX patterns and architecture.
IAB Europe welcomes proposals from experienced development partners with expertise in:
Interested organisations are invited to request the full RFP documentation and submission instructions by contacting:
Email: tcf.compliance [at] iabeurope.eu
Proposal Submission Deadline: 30th April, 2026
IAB Europe looks forward to engaging with qualified bidders to support this important enhancement to the TCF compliance programme.
Across Europe, thousands of online publishers depend on advertising to monetise their content. Although advertising revenue is often complemented by subscriptions and other income streams, it remains a primary mechanism enabling many publishers to provide content free of charge and sustain an open internet ecosystem.
However, the browsing behaviour underpinning this model, whereby users visit publisher websites to access content and become monetisable audiences, is evolving.
Following the deployment of AI-driven applications, including chatbots and search engine results page (SERP) summarisation features, publishers across Europe have reported declines in both traffic and advertising revenue. Two substitution dynamics appear particularly relevant:
Together, these developments suggest a structural shift in how users discover and consume digital content.
Despite growing attention to these dynamics, there is currently no quantitative consensus on their scale or economic impact within Europe.
Available evidence ranges from self-reported publisher metrics to aggregated indicators released by companies such as content delivery networks and analytics providers. Yet these signals must be interpreted within a highly dynamic digital environment.
Understanding the full extent of substitution effects requires visibility beyond publisher-owned data. Changes in traffic may reflect not only displacement, but also evolving user behaviour, including potential increases in certain query types driven by the expanding utility of AI-enabled services.
Accordingly, the analysis presented here should be understood as an early contribution to an evolving evidence base rather than a definitive assessment.
As part of a broader initiative examining content ingestion in the development and deployment of AI applications, IAB Europe sourced traffic data from a vendor with technology deployed on European web properties.
This report draws on a substantial sample of traffic data from hundreds of European websites that rely on advertising for at least a portion of their funding. While not exhaustive of the European publishing landscape, the dataset provides directional insight into emerging traffic patterns and helps establish a foundation for future research within the IAB Europe Publisher Content & AI Task Force.
We begin by examining changes in overall traffic composition to better understand how AI-enabled discovery is reshaping publisher traffic. The comparison below highlights how the relative contribution of major acquisition channels has evolved over the past year.
Disaggregating search referrals by property category reveals that this shift is not uniform. Some verticals have experienced pronounced declines in search-driven traffic, while others appear comparatively resilient or have grown their share.
This divergence suggests that substitution effects associated with AI-enabled discovery may be influencing content types differently. Categories heavily aligned with informational queries appear more exposed, whereas others may benefit from stronger brand affinity, habitual consumption, or alternative discovery pathways.
One emerging factor in this evolving discovery landscape is referral traffic generated directly by AI applications. Although still small in relative terms, AI referrals are now observable across multiple publisher categories, possibly indicating the early formation of a new acquisition channel.
Although AI referrals are observable within the dataset, their scale remains marginal and does not yet constitute a meaningful source of publisher traffic. At present, traffic losses appear to exceed the traffic generated by AI applications and features. Accordingly, AI should not yet be interpreted as a material traffic channel for publishers.
The data indicates that search continues to play a central role in publisher discovery, despite a modest year-on-year decline in its share. By contrast, AI referrals remain negligible in scale. At present, changes in publisher traffic appear driven primarily by adjustments within traditional channels rather than by the emergence of AI as a meaningful source of audience.
AI is rapidly reshaping Commerce Media. This Q&A with experts from our Retail & Commerce Media Committee explores how it is already delivering measurable value - from real‑time intent understanding and dynamic bidding to predictive audience building and multi‑agent workflow automation. Retailers and advertisers are beginning to overcome long‑standing challenges around data fragmentation and operational complexity, with AI enabling smarter planning, faster execution, and more relevant customer experiences. The shift from static segments to real‑time signals, alongside the rise of conversational interfaces and synthetic audiences, is setting a new standard for efficiency and performance.
Looking ahead, the next 12 months will bring even more transformative change. Advances such as multi‑agent orchestration, natural language “talk to your data” platforms, Bayesian measurement, and interoperability standards like MCP promise to eliminate operational bloat and unlock new strategic capabilities. Yet our experts stress that sustainable growth depends on strong governance, clean data, and user trust. As AI accelerates creative production, optimisation, and measurement, the industry must balance automation with oversight to ensure AI enhances - rather than overwhelms - the teams and brands that rely on it.
A big thank you to the following contributors for sharing their thoughts:
Diana Abebrese, Global Retail Media Lead, Empathy Lab by EPAM
James Taylor, Founder & CEO, Particular Audience
James: "Right now, AI in commerce media is driving what I call the Tripartite Win: it delivers efficiency and ROAS for advertisers, drives yield and monetisation for retailers, and most importantly, ensures absolute relevance and a better experience for the customer. But to understand its effectiveness, we have to stop grouping all AI into one bucket and define the spectrum: Statistical, Machine Learning (ML), Predictive, and Generative.
Where we are seeing the most immediate and effective value today is in the transition from static segments to real-time signals.
Diana: "This is a pivotal moment in commerce media - retailers and advertisers can see how AI can resolve the challenges they have been facing for many years around operational complexity, data and technical fragmentation and lack of standardisation. AI promises to deliver outcomes that are smarter, faster and easier, and we are seeing early adoption and delivery of real business value in 3 key areas:
Diana: "Orchestration is one of those overused words in retail media. What we really mean is how we can reduce the number of processes and platforms involved in a typical commerce media campaign lifecycle, and how we can standardise both data inputs and data outputs in order to reduce cognitive workload and duplication of efforts. - cross platform; cross-channel; cross-retailer; cross-team. Optimisation opportunities to streamline and accelerate processes come with multi-agentic workflows powered by LLMs and API connectors. Pollen by Sainsbury's is a great example of how this can work well. Getting this right requires future-facing planning, data hygiene and process optimisation. Not to mention user-friendly and intuitive user interfaces!"
James: "The biggest opportunity over the next year is eradicating operational bloat. AdOps has historically been weighed down by manual campaign setup and fragmented platforms, but we are entering an era of true, agentic orchestration.
The massive catalyst here is MCP (Model Context Protocol). For the audience less familiar, MCP is an open standard that securely connects generative AI models to local data sources. It effectively shortcuts what used to take months of dedicated, brittle API integrations into a process that takes mere minutes.
Functional Ad Units: Technologies like Retail-MCP are enabling the creation of dynamic, functional apps, and we believe functional ad units will follow, on the fly, for retailers and their brands. This shift will drastically reduce the cognitive load on AdOps teams, freeing them from manual data entry to focus on high-level strategy."
Diana: "I expect to see the industry embracing AI in order to make things faster, smarter and easier. Multi-agentic solutions, natural language models and generative AI will start to power commerce media capabilities cross-retailer and cross-channel. We will see a huge rise in Talk to your Data platforms - informing media planning decision-making, creative processes, real-time optimisation strategies and measurement and insight capabilities - satisfying many of the demands coming from the market At Empathy Lab we are seeing growing demand for our Synthetic Audience solutions - creating “customer” panels for testing of new products, promotions and creative concepts at scale, with Mars reporting over 75% accuracy of results, when compared with scores from human panels."
James: "Measurement and predictive modelling are about to undergo a radical transformation. As an industry, retail faces a massive multi-objective optimisation problem. "Incrementality" is the buzzword, but we have to ask: incrementality of what?
Over the next 12 months, the most transformative trends will be:
James: "When it comes to unleashing AI, my favourite word internally at Particular Audience is Governance. The fear of losing control over generative creative at hyper-scale is a massive barrier to AI adoption, which is exactly why we haven't all just handed the keys over to an autonomous agent to run our businesses.
To unlock sustainable growth, the industry must address governance head-on by splitting our approaches to Predictive versus Generative AI:
Ultimately, governance ensures we are using AI to solve actual problems, rather than just rapidly automating our mistakes.
Diana: "At a micro level, we see a high level of cynicism within companies. Whilst users recognise personal benefits when using AI at work and at home, they need to feel empowered and in control of their interactions with AI business tools before fully embracing them. User research and consultation to define use cases alongside a measured roll-out process and feedback loop will be instrumental in overcoming these challenges."
If Retail and Commerce Media are on your radar this year, this is one virtual event you’ll want to have firmly in your calendar.
We have officially revealed the first speakers and full agenda for our latest Great Debate on Retail Media, and it’s set to bring together some of the most important conversations shaping the future of the space.
Taking place on 21st April at 14:00 CET, the event will gather senior leaders from across the ecosystem for a fast-paced, interactive session designed not just to inform, but to challenge, provoke, and move the industry forward.
Retail Media continues to attract significant investment and attention, but with that growth comes increasing complexity.
From fragmentation and measurement challenges to the rapid rise of AI and developing retailer-brand dynamics, the industry is at a pivotal moment. The questions are no longer theoretical; they’re practical, urgent, and in many cases, unresolved.
That’s exactly why this event takes a different approach.
Rather than presenting a single viewpoint, The Great Debate puts contrasting perspectives head-to-head, creating space for open discussion on the issues that matter most.
This year’s agenda has been designed to reflect the breadth of today’s Retail Media landscape. Covering topics related to the work of our Retail & Commerce Media Committee, topics include:
The AI‑Powered Retail Media Supply Chain: From Insight to Activation
An exploration into how AI is reshaping personalisation, bidding, and ad operations. Panellists will also discuss measurement challenges, like incrementality and the rise of synthetic audiences.
The Convergence and Coexistence of Trade and Media
Speakers will tackle one of the most pressing strategic questions in modern Retail Media: should trade and media functions converge into a unified discipline, or remain distinct to preserve their unique value? Expect a lively, structured exchange as experts argue both sides.
Measurement, Transparency, and Standardisation
Discover what’s new in Version 2 of our Measurement Standards, including enhanced guidance designed to drive greater consistency, comparability, and confidence across the ecosystem. We’ll also introduce the new Flexi Formats framework and offer a forward view into the roadmap for Version 3.
Programmatic On-Site: Unlocking Scale
Finally, speakers will dive into how programmatic on-site advertising is unlocking new scale for Retail Media, enabling both endemic and non-endemic brands to reach high-intent audiences.
The event will be hosted by our Retail & Commerce Media Committee Chairs:
They’ll be joined by a strong line-up of industry leaders, including:
Selen Ozkan, Head of CPG & Retail EMEA, Uber Advertising
Paul Dahill, Managing Director of EMEA Sales, Koddi
Polina Melnikova, Strategic Growth Director, Moloco Commerce Media
James Taylor, Founder and CEO, Particular Audience
Lisa Avery, Director of Customer Success EMEA, Zitcha
Mazen Mroueh, Head of Retail Media & Partnerships, Publicis Media
With perspectives spanning retailers, agencies, and ad tech, the discussions promise to reflect the full diversity of the ecosystem.
Retail Media is moving quickly, but its future is still being defined.
If you’re looking to stay ahead of the key trends, understand different perspectives, and be part of the conversations shaping the European market, this is where it happens.
Explore the full agenda and view the speaker line-up here.
And if you can’t attend live, be sure to register, as the recording will be shared with all registrants after the event.
Connected TV (CTV) is rapidly becoming a measurable, performance‑driving channel, and this Q&A with experts from our CTV Working Group explores how advances in cross‑device attribution, privacy‑safe audience frameworks, programmatic access, and attention‑based measurement are enabling advertisers to link big‑screen exposure to real outcomes. While fragmentation, shared‑device viewing, and inconsistent identifiers still complicate attribution, CTV is proving highly effective when used within coordinated omnichannel strategies that pair high‑attention storytelling with downstream retargeting and search lift. Looking ahead, the group expects CTV’s conversion role to strengthen as interoperability improves, attribution windows mature, and data connections deepen, positioning CTV as a hybrid brand‑plus‑performance channel within the modern media mix.
A big thank you to the following contributors for sharing their thoughts:
Ekaterina Vagner, Marketing Director - EMEA, Verve
Samir Chabab, VP Global Marketing, Ogury
Michael Möller, CTO, Visoon Video Impact, Digital Video Working Group Chair, BVDW
Andreas Hamdorf, Lead Strategic Partner Management, esome advertising technologies for BVDW
Todd Randak, GM, CTV, DoubleVerify
Samir - "CTV is no longer just an awareness channel. It’s becoming a measurable, outcome-driven environment that can support real performance objectives. Advances in cross-device measurement have improved the industry’s ability to understand how audiences move across screens. Rather than depending solely on device-level identifiers, advertisers are increasingly working with privacy-safe audience frameworks that provide a more consistent view of exposure and outcomes. At the same time, planning approaches are shifting from individual tracking to broader audience cohorts. With the development of attention metrics, incrementality testing, and brand lift studies, CTV can now be assessed not just on reach, but on its measurable contribution to business results."
Ekaterina - "The biggest unlock has been measurement catching up with behaviour. Mobile Measurement Partners can now connect a CTV exposure to downstream app installs and actions using household-level signals and cross-device graphs. That makes CTV measurable in a way that looks far more like mobile attribution than traditional TV reporting. Programmatic access also changed the game. Buyers can transact impression by impression, optimise toward outcomes, and feed campaign data back into predictive models. Add better integrations across DSPs, OEMs, and measurement platforms, and CTV is no longer a blind spot. It is an addressable environment with traceable influence."
Todd - "CTV’s evolution from brand channel to performance driver is being powered by stronger measurement foundations and better ways to connect ad exposure to real-world outcomes. Advertisers can increasingly link a streaming ad viewed on a TV screen to actions taken later, such as website visits, app downloads, or purchases. Improvements in cross-device matching, combined with integration into broader measurement frameworks, are helping marketers understand CTV’s role alongside other channels. Just as importantly, impression-level verification ensures ads are delivered in quality environments, giving advertisers confidence that reported conversions are based on trusted media exposure. Together, these advancements allow CTV to prove impact with the rigour marketers expect from digital channels."
Andreas - "CTV can be purchased via DSPs and measured via ad servers or special measurement providers. This enables the connection of advertising contacts with website visits, app downloads, lead and conversion tracking, as we know them from digital advertising contacts. Some providers also offer the option of using data clean rooms to compare conversions on websites with advertising contacts on streaming services using hashed email addresses."
Michael - "With a clean measurement and tracking setup, CTV evolves from a pure awareness channel into a true performance driver. This requires cross-device attribution, search lift and conversion lift measurement, the use of QR codes or vanity URLs, and first-party data for precise audience targeting. Without this infrastructure, CTV remains positioned in the upper funnel. With it, however, CTV becomes measurable, optimisable, and performance-relevant."
Andreas - "Depending on how users view content on CTV, e.g., via FAST, BVOD, or AVOD, identifiers that enable clear attribution of the conversion to the advertising contact are not always available. A CTV big screen device, for example, is often located in a household where different people live. The person in front of the TV screen is not always the same person who operates the digital device used to make the purchase. As a result, many CTV conversion measurements are currently still based on IP addresses and ID matching using household graphs. In Germany, we also face the challenge that private IP addresses are constantly changing, which makes it even more difficult to assign identifiers that belong to different devices in the same household with a time delay."
Todd - "Despite advancements in measurement, attribution remains the primary friction point. Streaming ads are often viewed on shared household devices, while conversions typically occur on personal devices like smartphones or laptops. Limited cross-device visibility, restricted data sharing in closed platforms, and inconsistent standards make it difficult to see the full customer journey. Opaque buying paths can further reduce confidence in reported results. Attribution for CTV, just like all other channels, continues to be an imperfect science. But without transparency into where ads ran and how they were delivered, advertisers cannot confidently test, learn, and validate CTV’s true impact."
Samir - "The biggest challenge is fragmentation. Audiences move across platforms and devices, but measurement often remains siloed. Signals between CTV and other environments are not always consistent, and there is still no universal standard for attribution or performance metrics. As a result, it can be difficult to connect reach and attention on the TV screen with measurable conversion outcomes. Many advertisers struggle to build a clear, end-to-end view of performance across screens. Addressing this requires more unified audience approaches and privacy-safe measurement frameworks that can operate consistently across environments. Without that coherence, CTV risks being measured in isolation rather than as part of the broader consumer journey."
Ekaterina - "CTV does not behave like click-based media, and treating it that way leads to frustration. The user journey is longer, often spanning several days, which means short attribution windows miss real impact. Signal density is also lighter. Bid requests carry limited identifiers, so optimisation leans on modelling rather than deterministic tracking. Many brands still overvalue contextual signals meant for brand safety rather than performance outcomes. Then there is fragmentation. Not every platform integrates cleanly with measurement stacks, creating partial visibility unless the tech ecosystem is carefully aligned from the start."
Michael - "Realistically, CTV is rarely a last-click hero. Its strength lies in acting as a demand generator that improves the efficiency of downstream performance channels. Many performance teams observe increasing ROAS in search, decreasing CPAs due to stronger pre-qualification, and measurable brand lift. CTV therefore does not operate in isolation but functions as a multiplier within a holistic media mix."
Samir - "CTV tends to be most effective when it plays a defined role within a broader omnichannel strategy. The big screen is powerful for driving awareness and consideration through high-impact storytelling, while other digital environments often support retargeting and conversion. It works particularly well when messaging and audience strategy are aligned across screens. When exposure on CTV is reinforced through complementary digital touchpoints, brands can guide consumers along a more coherent path from discovery to action. Rather than acting as a standalone conversion channel, CTV proves most effective when it contributes to a coordinated, full-funnel approach that connects brand impact with measurable outcomes."
Andreas - "CTV is suitable for conversion campaigns when promoting a product or offer that users can easily remember, or that is highly relevant to the viewer. Some users pause the stream and may respond briefly to a QR code or other call to action. But the majority of users need to remember the commercial, which must be relevant to them. They then visit the provider's website at a later time, or ideally while streaming on their smartphone or tablet.
The less the ad competes for users' attention, the greater the chance of ad recall and impact. That's why we recommend CTV providers to our customers who currently have a relatively low number of commercials in an ad block and whose ad blocks are no longer than 120 seconds."
Michael - "CTV generates particularly highlevels of attention due to the large screen and lean-back viewing environment. This level of attention often translates into downstream user action, such as branded search volume increases, direct traffic rises, app installs grow, and conversions occur later on mobile or desktop devices. Many performance teams observe increasing ROAS in search, decreasing CPAs due to stronger pre-qualification, and measurable brand lift."
Todd - "CTV is proving most effective as a conversion platform when it’s activated as a true full-funnel channel. A well-targeted, contextually relevant streaming ad can build brand equity while simultaneously driving consideration and action, particularly as interactive and shoppable formats gain traction. Retail, direct-to-consumer, and app-based brands are seeing strong performance when CTV is integrated into broader cross-screen strategies and measured against outcome-based KPIs. However, success depends on consistent cross-funnel measurement. When advertisers can verify media quality and connect exposure to real results, they no longer have to choose between brand impact and performance–they can achieve both."
Todd - "For years, CTV earned its place as a premium brand-building environment. What will define its next phase is the industry’s ability to scale existing technology and apply content-level data to consistently connect on-screen exposure to measurable business outcomes with transparency. As marketers shift from reach and frequency toward metrics like sales and customer acquisition, channels that can demonstrate incremental impact will win performance budgets. That requires clearer cross-channel measurement, stronger data connections between devices, and greater transparency into how and where ads are delivered. CTV has the audience quality and engagement to drive results, providing that impact with rigour and transparency will shape its role moving forward."
Ekaterina - "Execution discipline will matter more than innovation hype. The winners will be those who align supply paths, measurement frameworks, and creative specifically for performance goals instead of repurposing brand playbooks. Expect better standardisation of integrations, longer and more realistic attribution models, and closer collaboration between buyers, DSPs, and supply partners to curate inventory around outcomes. As more mobile first advertisers test and scale, CTV will settle into a hybrid identity. Not replacing brand advertising, but operating alongside it as a measurable, programmatic channel that drives both attention and acquisition."
Samir - "Over the next 12–24 months, CTV’s role will be defined by merging brand and performance measurement within privacy-first frameworks. Persona-based planning, consistent cross-screen activation, and attention-driven metrics will allow advertisers to evaluate the quality of engagement. Programmatic accessibility and improved interoperability between CTV, mobile, and desktop will further reduce fragmentation. With budgets shifting from linear TV to digital environments, CTV will increasingly operate as both an upper- and mid-funnel driver, capable of generating measurable consideration and conversion signals while sustaining long-term brand impact."
Andreas - "If we manage to define a uniform basis of identifiers that we can use to link advertising contacts on the CTV big screen with subsequent purchases on the website or in the app, measurability and thus demand for conversion campaigns will increase. The use of data clean rooms may also be an option, provided that CTV providers and advertisers are willing to match their conversion data on such a platform. However, this will only be relevant for CTV providers who have user data from subscriptions themselves."
Michael - "Compared to traditional linear TV, CTV offers significant advantages: granular household and audience targeting, frequency control, real-time optimisation, and clearer conversion measurability. Strategically, CTV sits between traditional TV, which primarily delivers reach, and performance channels such as paid social and paid search, which are optimised for efficiency and direct response. CTV therefore does not operate in isolation but functions as a multiplier within a holistic media mix."
Explore more of our CTV work on our Knowledge Hub and reach out to Marie-Clare Puffett at puffett [at] iabeurope.eu to learn how you can participate, contribute, and share your expertise in the Working Group.
Brussels, Belgium, 4th March 2026 - IAB Europe, the European-level industry association for the digital marketing and advertising ecosystem, today announced its fourth annual State of Readiness - Sustainability in Digital Advertising Report, providing a comprehensive overview of how the European digital advertising ecosystem is progressing across environmental and social sustainability.
Now in its fourth year, the survey reflects a sector expanding its sustainability lens. For the first time, the 2026 edition assesses both environmental sustainability (including carbon emissions) and social sustainability (including privacy, media plurality, accessibility, diversity, and responsible media).
This addition reflects a growing recognition across the industry that sustainability today is not only about environmental progress. It is equally about people, accountability, responsible practices, and wider societal outcomes. As regulatory scrutiny increases and expectations from advertisers, publishers, employees, and consumers continue to rise, digital advertising sustainability must be understood through both environmental and social lenses.
The survey was conducted between November 2025 and January 2026, gathering 135 responses from companies and associations active across all European markets.
Key Findings from the Report:
Commenting on the report's findings, Steffen Hubert, Director of External Affairs & Sustainability, Seven.One Entertainment Group and Chair of IAB Europe’s Sustainability Standards Committee, said, “This year’s State of Readiness confirms what the Beyond Reach report began to map: when you apply an industry-wide double materiality lens, social topics come out on top. Privacy, accessibility, responsible media and media plurality are business-critical conditions for trust and long-term value creation. Now we must turn that clarity into comparable definitions, credible evidence and practical action across the ecosystem."
Also commenting on the report, IAB Europe’s Data & Innovation Strategist, Dimitris Beis, said “State of Readiness 2026 provides quantitative grounding for the evolving scope of the Sustainability Standards Committee. It moves digital ad sustainability beyond being seen as a carbon footprint side-car, while recognising that environmental impact remains critical, and demonstrates that sustainability as defined here reflects the real structural issues facing our ecosystem.”
Strengthening Social Sustainability Through Industry Collaboration
In response to this year’s findings, IAB Europe’s Sustainability Standards Committee has enhanced its focus on advancing guidance, education, and best practices across social sustainability themes.
Building on established environmental initiatives, the Committee is intensifying its work on responsible media, accessibility, diversity, media plurality, and privacy. This ensures that sustainability efforts within digital advertising address both environmental impact and wider societal responsibility in a structured and measurable way.
The full 2026 Report is available on IAB Europe’s website here. Additional practical resources and information on how to participate in ongoing standards development can be found via the Sustainability Hub.
We’re delighted to welcome Booking.com as a new member of IAB Europe, marking an exciting step forward as we continue to broaden our engagement across key commerce-driven sectors. As one of the world’s leading digital travel platforms, Booking.com brings invaluable perspective and expertise from the travel ecosystem - a sector playing an increasingly important role in the expansion of Commerce Media in Europe.
As Commerce Media matures beyond retail, sectors such as travel and financial services are rapidly innovating in how media is planned, activated, and measured. Bringing these sectors into the conversation is essential to ensuring that industry standards remain relevant, practical, and future-proof.
Through the work of our Retail & Commerce Media Committee, we aim to convene leading commerce media networks across travel and financial services to align on shared measurement priorities, build on our existing commerce media measurement standards, and identify sector-specific needs, gaps, and opportunities.
To kick off this collaboration, we spoke with Bram van Asperen, Senior Commercial Manager - Advertising at Booking.com to get his perspective on Commerce Media, measurement, and the role of standards in driving growth.
“In my role, I spend a lot of time in the engine room of a global marketplace. On a daily basis, we’re navigating different regional regulations, diverse partner expectations and the technical complexity that comes with operating an ad business across many markets.
What I’m most looking forward to in joining IAB Europe is the opportunity to step out of that day-to-day execution and into a broader industry conversation. Being part of this community allows us to share what we’ve learned at scale, while also learning from others who are solving similar challenges in different sectors.
One of the biggest opportunities I see right now is creating a shared language around Commerce Media - clearer definitions, aligned expectations and more consistent ways of explaining value and measurement. When we get that right, it reduces friction for advertisers, agencies and platforms alike.
Ultimately, being part of IAB Europe is about helping Commerce Media grow in a way that is more standardised, transparent and sustainable - not just for the largest players, but for the ecosystem as a whole.”
“Commerce Media has already been key at Booking.com, and it allows us to introduce unique dynamics to the conversation because the path to purchase is rarely linear. These are high-consideration, emotionally driven decisions often planned weeks or months in advance. Consequently, Commerce Media in travel isn’t just a transactional engine; it’s about curating a more helpful travel journey from the initial spark of inspiration through to the final booking.
This creates a unique opportunity for both endemic and non-endemic partners to engage with a high-intent audience in a context that is incredibly accurate. A 'confirmed booker' signals a clear window of intent. This milestone marks the transition from inspiration to preparation, creating a unique opportunity for brands to offer relevant products like apparel, travel tech or insurance exactly when the traveller is most likely to need them.
As we facilitate the entire travel lifecycle, we can offer partners privacy-safe, anonymised audience insights that aren't available elsewhere at this scale. As the industry evolves, our priority remains the careful stewardship of the customer experience. By balancing deep audience signals with a 'privacy-by-design' approach, we ensure that travellers get a more tailored experience and we deliver value to a wider array of partners without ever compromising the trust or digital safety of our customers.”
“One of our core priorities is building measurement frameworks that are both credible and realistic. At Booking.com, this carries particular responsibility as we operate in a highly regulated environment where privacy, data protection and consumer trust are non-negotiable.
On the one hand, our partners expect robust measurement and optimisation capabilities that clearly demonstrate the value and impact of their investment, and on the other hand, we have a duty to ensure that data is handled responsibly and in full compliance with evolving regulatory standards. We do not see these objectives as competing, but as foundational to how Commerce Media should be built and scaled.
This challenge is not unique to travel. We see strong alignment with other sectors such as retail and finance, where the focus is equally on proving incrementality and long-term impact through privacy-safe, first-party data. Through our participation in IAB Europe, we aim to contribute to cross-industry standards that acknowledge these regulatory realities, while still enabling the level of transparency and insight advertisers need to make informed decisions.”
“The release of the Commerce Media Measurement Standards V2 is an important step forward, and I’m particularly encouraged to see that dedicated travel standards are on the roadmap for 2026. From my perspective, leading the commercial team at Booking.com, there are a few areas where travel requires a more nuanced treatment to fully align with the broader Commerce Media framework.
First, extended lookback windows are critical. While V2 establishes a 30-day default for endemic brands, travel is inherently a high-consideration purchase with longer planning cycles. Validating more flexible attribution windows would allow measurement to better reflect the full journey - from initial inspiration through to booking - which in travel can span several weeks or even months.
Second, the definition of “confirmed sales” requires additional clarity for travel. The distinction between Gross and Net Sales in the current standards is a vital foundation, but travel introduces a significant delay between the booking (the transaction) and the actual stay (the consumption). This creates inherent complexity and slowness in measuring final results. We need to validate standards for how cancellations are reflected when they occur months after the media exposure, while also establishing frameworks for the specific estimations we use to bridge that measurement gap.
Finally, there is an opportunity to further elevate upper- and mid-funnel measurement. Given the amount of research travellers undertake, conversion-led metrics such as ROAS only capture part of the value. Greater validation and standardisation of brand and consideration metrics - such as ad recall or brand recognition - would help properly value media that influences decision-making earlier in the journey.
Recognising these travel-specific nuances will make it easier for travel media networks to adopt the standards in a way that is transparent, comparable and commercially viable for partners across the ecosystem.”
“Scale in Commerce Media is only sustainable if it is built on a foundation of shared trust. No single platform or sector has all the answers. Cross-industry collaboration allows us to reduce fragmentation, align on standards, and create a clearer and more navigable ecosystem for advertisers.
I see real value in radical transparency: openly sharing what works, pressure-testing assumptions around measurement and being honest about the challenges of operating responsibly at scale. That includes acknowledging that many Commerce Media platforms, travel included, were not originally built with advertising from the start.
That reality makes collaboration even more important. As an industry, we are collectively building new capabilities, new operating models and new teams. At the same time, we are competing for the best talent to help professionalise and scale these media networks in the right way. Learning from adjacent sectors that are further along in their maturity curve accelerates that process significantly.
IAB Europe plays a critical role in providing a neutral ground for these conversations. By bringing industries together, it helps us move beyond experimentation toward a more transparent, trusted, and commercially mature Commerce Media ecosystem across Europe.”
If you’re operating in the travel sector, or are more broadly interested in shaping the future of Retail & Commerce Media, we’d love to hear from you. Visit our Retail Media Hub to find out more, or get in touch with the team at communication [at] iabeurope.eu.
Sustainability is taking centre stage in digital advertising this March, and 2026 is the year to turn bold ideas into real-world impact. From environmental progress to social responsibility, this is your chance to see how the industry is shaping a smarter and more purposeful future.
On 4th March at 11:00 AM CET, join our Great Debate on Sustainability, where we will explore how digital advertising can make a tangible difference. We’ll unveil insights from our soon-to-be published State of Readiness report, deep dive into the Beyond Reach Report, and explore what actionable steps brands and agencies can take to embed sustainability across their strategies.
This year’s event brings together a powerful mix of industry pioneers, academic leaders, and corporate decision-makers, each offering a distinct perspective on how sustainability must move from ambition to action.
Hear from speakers including:
Steffen Hubert, Director of External Affairs & Sustainability, Seven.One Entertainment Group and Chair of the Sustainability Standards Committee
Emanuela Recalcati, Global Head of Emerging Innovation and Creative Services, WPP Media and Co-Chair of the Sustainability Standards Committee
Audrey Danthony, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Impact Plus
Clement Cordeiro, Head of Client Services - Carbon Success Manager, DK
Prof. Dr. Lisa-Charlotte Wolter, Professor at International University of Applied Sciences
Marco Pierani, Director, Corporate Affairs & Public Relations, Euroconsumers
More speakers can be seen on our event page here.
Expect thoughtful insights, actionable ideas, and honest discussions as we explore:
Curious about the debate? Read our Q&A blog with Chairs Steffen Hubert and Emanuela Recalcati to get a preview of the discussions and insights they’ll bring to the event.
Secure your free virtual space and be part of a smarter, more sustainable digital advertising future.
Retail Media continues to scale across markets. Budgets are growing, expectations are tightening, and one issue keeps returning to the surface: comparability.
This week marks an important milestone for the global Retail Media ecosystem. IAB Australia, in collaboration with IAB Europe, has launched the IAB Australia Retail Media Certification Program. The initiative is a local adaptation of the IAB Europe Retail Media Certification Programme and is grounded in the standards developed by IAB Europe’s Retail and Commerce Media Committee.
Coles 360 will be the first Australian retail media network to enter the independent audit process, signalling a commitment to transparent and accountable measurement as retail media matures within the market.
The Australian Program mirrors the core principles of the European certification model. Retailers and ad tech companies can undergo an independent audit of their retail media measurement practices against the mandatory requirements set out in IAB Europe’s Compliance Table.
As with the process carried out in Europe, once the audit is completed, IAB Australia reviews the auditor’s report and, where the criteria are met, issues a certification badge valid for two years.
This structure is deliberate. Certification is not a declaration of intent. It is independent verification against a clearly defined, industry-agreed baseline.
Retail Media has developed quickly. In many markets, it has moved from experimentation to structural budget allocation in a short period of time. Measurement alignment has not always progressed at the same pace.
Inconsistent definitions, variations in methodology, and differing reporting standards create friction for brands and agencies operating across multiple retail environments. Certification does not seek to limit innovation. It establishes a shared framework so that performance discussions are grounded in common expectations.
Retail media’s continued development depends on transparent measurement and a common language that advertisers can trust.
An Australian retailer entering this certification process reinforces that verified measurement is not regionally specific. It is becoming a global expectation.
The Programme is designed to promote a level playing field by aligning measurement practices to a common, independently verified standard. Independent verification increases confidence in reported metrics and methodologies, helping ensure retail media is assessed against expectations applied across other digital channels.
In practical terms, this brings clearer definitions, transparency around calculation methodologies, and consistency in how performance is reported. When retailers are measured against the same mandatory requirements, differences in results reflect strategy and execution rather than interpretation.
For brands and agencies, this reduces ambiguity in cross-retailer evaluation and supports more robust investment decisions. For retailers, it signals operational maturity and readiness to be assessed against agreed standards. For the broader ecosystem, it strengthens trust by anchoring growth in accountability.
As Retail Media becomes more deeply embedded within media plans, confidence in reported outcomes is no longer a preference. It is a requirement.
The IAB Europe Retail Media Certification Programme was created to bring consistency across retailers and ad tech companies operating in Europe. The adoption of a locally adapted model in Australia demonstrates the portability and relevance of those standards.
Retail media does not lack demand. What it requires is clarity.
Certification provides a transparent benchmark. It enables retailers to demonstrate compliance with industry-agreed standards and gives advertisers a more reliable foundation for comparison.
The Australian launch marks an important step in the international alignment of retail media measurement standards, reinforcing that transparency and comparability are becoming shared expectations across markets rather than isolated initiatives.
For more information on the IAB Europe Retail Media Certification Programme, visit the website here.
More about the IAB Australia Retail Media Certification Program here.
Social media continues to be one of the fastest-growing channels in European advertising. According to our latest AdEx report, social media advertising grew by 23.9% in 2024, ranking it among the top-performing channels across the region.
But growth alone doesn’t tell the whole story.
Behind these headline figures, advertisers and agencies are having to balance opportunity with increasing expectations around media quality, measurement confidence, and transparency. Budget decisions are no longer made on reach and engagement alone. They’re shaped by the ability to demonstrate performance, protect brand safety, and trust reporting standards.
Which raises important questions:
A Clearer Picture of Budget Priorities
To better understand how these forces are shaping real investment decisions, IAB Europe, in collaboration with DoubleVerify, has launched The State of Social Media Investment & Media Quality in Europe.
This new research study aims to capture:
The goal is simple: move beyond assumptions and capture real advertiser and agency experience.
Why Your Voice Matters
If you’re involved in planning, buying, or overseeing social media campaigns, we’d love to hear from you. Your input will help build a more grounded and representative view of how budgets are being allocated, and why.
The survey takes about 10 minutes to complete. As a thank you for your time, participants can also enter a prize draw to win a €250 voucher.
If you’re not directly involved in budget decisions, please consider sharing the survey with advertiser or agency contacts who are. Your share could help shape more meaningful insights for the whole industry.
Brussels, Belgium, 23rd February 2026 – IAB Europe welcomes the European Commission’s ambition to simplify the EU digital acquis through the Digital Omnibus proposal. Reducing regulatory fragmentation, addressing consent fatigue, and providing greater legal certainty are essential to strengthening Europe’s digital economy while maintaining high standards of data protection.
As the legislative process advances, IAB Europe’s position paper calls on co-legislators to ensure that simplification efforts are grounded in a genuinely risk-based approach. The position paper encourages the co-regulators to:
Legal certainty around what constitutes personal data is fundamental to the effective functioning of the GDPR. IAB Europe supports efforts to align the interpretation of identifiability with a recent Court of Justice of the European Union ruling (EDPS v SRB), ensuring that assessments of whether data is personal are realistic, contextual, and based on practical means available to a given organisation. Clear boundaries around identifiability will incentivise responsible investment in privacy-enhancing technologies and pseudonymisation techniques. This approach supports innovation while maintaining strong protections for individuals.
IAB Europe strongly supports the objective of reducing consent fatigue for European consumers. However, true simplification requires addressing the structural causes of banner proliferation. The current framework often requires consent for low-impact, operational uses of data that pose minimal privacy risk. A more proportionate, risk-based approach would allow essential digital functions to operate under appropriate safeguards, reserving consent for higher-impact processing.
At the same time, the European Commission’s proposal for a centralised or browser-level consent mechanism is technically unworkable and poses a severe economic risk to ad-funded services. Decoupling consent from the direct relationship between users and service providers would prevent providers such as publishers from explaining the specific value exchange that funds free content and services. This is particularly damaging to independent and smaller publishers, as well as competing digital service providers, who rely on direct engagement with their audiences to sustain their business models. Weakening these foundations risks reducing revenues and ultimately limiting consumers’ ability to access free content and services.
For more information, you can access the full position paper under this link.
